The closed cycle repetitively pulsed gas lasers which have been built to date utilize a closed cycle gas recirculating system as shown in FIG. 1 of the drawings. In these systems, the laser gas is continuously circulated by fans or compressors in a closed system. The heat added to the laser gas due to electrical or optical excitation and due to compression is removed by heat exchangers. Sometimes, a temperature trimmer is used just upstream of the laser cavity to reduce the spatial temperature variation of the laser gas and insure good media quality in the cavity or equivalently to insure good laser beam quality. Acoustic suppressors are used either in the side walls or in the laser gas circulator to damp out the gas density perturbations generated by the excitation process of depositing energy into the relatively small volume of gas in the laser cavity. Additionally, flow straightening screens or porous honeycomb materials are sometimes used upstream of the laser cavity to improve media uniformity. With these devices, a relatively large quanity of laser gas is required and is continuously circulated throughout the system. Therefore, the system is relatively heavy as well as requiring a substantial amount of average power to run the circulating system for reconditioning the laser gas after each laser pulse that is produced. Therefore, it can be seen that a more compact and power efficient closed cycle system is needed to enhance fieldability of a laser of this type as well as to reduce the average power required for conditioning the laser gas.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a closed system in which the laser gas can be reconditioned after each pulse utilizing a relatively small space and a smaller amount of power required to recondition the laser gas.
Another object of this invention is to provide a push-pull pulsed laser gas configuration in which fieldability of the device is enhanced.
Other objects and advantages of this invention will be obvious to those skilled in this art.